Thursday, March 4, 2010

We pray for moments like this IV - Cape Town - 14-16 Feb 2010

On the 14th the band go into the Redbull Studios to start working on a collaboration with the legendary P-Dog, AKA Yesterday's Pupil. Anja and I drop by the studio to say hey. I drool over the fact that they have Moog, Nord and Virus synths in the studio. Peach is plugging cables in and out all over trying to get them to run into the system so we can hear them, but can't get anything coming through before Anja and I need to leave. We go watch fantastic Mr. Fox. It's fantastic. We go out for dinner. Anja has sushi and I eat way too much Chinese food for dinner. Egg flake soup, crispy pancakes, beef chop suey, sweet and sour chicken, chocolate spring rolls and green tea are also fantastic. Happy Valentines day to us.

We spend most of Monday on the couch watching celebrity scandals and local music videos. MK is running our ad for the tour plus promos advertising that Jo Fo will be playing live on the channel on Thursday night. Round 5ish we head through to the Studios to collect the band. Peach plays us the progress on the song. It's sounding awesome. Apparently P-D has been making the band re-record all thier parts repeatedly, playing their drums/ guitars/ bass/ voiceboxes totally differently each time. The song looks like it's got 80 layers to it.

We steal the Foreigners, throw them in Anja's car and head toward Table Mountain. The view from where the cable cars leave from is already pretty awesome. We get into our cable car and through Jun's lens it looks like we've accidentally burst onto the set of 2001. We reach the top of the mountain and it's just cloud madness. Once in a while the wind blows us little peepholes into the world below, but for the most part we're just surrounded by clouds. Anja's kinda bummed that we can't see the whole view, but I'm totally loving being up in this surreal grey wasteland. As Lex points out, it's like being in some kind of Super Nintendo era Final Fantasy game, floating through this void on a massive chunk of rock. There are even random encounters with fearsome enemies. Jun wants to try get a photo of the sunset from bellow the clouds, so we pile back into a cable car. On the way down we get the most incredible sunset. Unfortunately it only last for about 3 a half seconds in this tiny window of time after we get out from under the clouds and before we drop behind the shadow of a surrounding mountain. Jun isn't able to photograph it in time, but the image is permanently burnt into everyone's brains. We head down to the beach and catch the last few beams of sunlight before night falls. While we're on the beach P-dog calls me from the studio. He says he's tried mixing the song totally differently, cleaning everything up a bunch. He says it sounds great, but really pop. He's wondering if I think it's a good idea or if the band are gonna hate it. I laugh and tell him the band don't have popaphobia. We get pizza for dinner and head through to Jean's place to eat it. I spend most of the night staring at Jean's insanely intricate new illustration style, his exploding vinyl collection and the three towers of pizza boxes built up to the ceiling of his kitchen. Afterwards we head back to Dom's house and hang out on her balcony. Junior's playing us songs by awesome bands I've never heard of, but the only one I can still remember the next morning is Gerling. The 16th is another chill day for Benandanja and another record day for Lexjunkelandpeach. Anja and i drop by the studio at around 6ish to steal Junior for a bit so he can get some proper sunset photos. Kel tags along and Lex stays to work on mixing the song with Peach. We head back to the studio, meet up with Dom, Lex and Peach and go out for some dinner. Afterwards we part ways and Jun shoot some pretty rad photos around Dom's house.

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